This project is to help promote and raise awareness of the Arctic and traditional roles of women in the past relating to clothing and textile production . We hope to bring the social sciences and the arts together so that ideas and concepts explored through more academic venues are shared and dissipated through the arts.

Marled Mader

I’m an artist with focus on reproduction and reconstruction of historic textiles. In 1980 I started to weave and from 2000 on to concentrate on historic textile techniques, mainly european iron age and early medieval times. I used to be a teacher in primary school, but am retired since one and a half year.

For years I have been working together with scientists, esp. textile archeologist like Nicole Reifarth, Claus Kropp, Katrin Kania, Prof. Haffner, Dr. Cordie, just to name a few. I do a lot of research but more on a private level.

My last project was the reproduction of an iron age textile, in collaboration with Nicole Reifarth, who researched the textile. Her results and the documentation of my work will be published in the exhibition catalogue of a new exhibition: Glamour and glory of the celtic man in the Belginum museum. I work also together with Lauresham, especially in the weaving house where I dress the looms and teach the staff (and interested people in courses) in using a warp weighted loom. There will be also an article about the warp-weighted loom in the annual publication of Lauresham.

My first journeys to Iceland also sparked my interest in the history of the country, especially the settlement time and with the icelandic sheep I found a good fibre producer for a historical appropriate yarn. During my travels I met Marianne and we developped the plan to reproduce an Icelandic viking age textile. Therefore, we met last year at the Textil Setur in Blönduós (the Textile Museum) where we worked on a fabric for the Blue Lady. I did the handspinning for the fabric, the dyeing and the weaving as well as the tablet weaving, whereas Marianne took over the spinning of the sewing thread and the sewing of the smokkr. You will find some details on my blog, unfortunately in german http://textileflaeche.blogspot.de/2016/01/garn-fur-mein-island-projekt.html
My next project for my next art residency in Blönduós in March is a varafeldur and some old scandinavian weaving techniques like krokbragd and dukagang.